Anne Lamott is stopping by the Oak Brook Borders tonight (one of the few Chicagoland locations that’s staying open while the company figures out all that bankruptcy stuff). She is promoting the paperback release of her most recent novel, Imperfect Birds. In this book, she continues the story of Elizabeth Ferguson and her daughter Rosie. As Elizabeth struggles with sobriety, teenager Rosie struggles with her own addiction. For more on Anne Lamott, check out our interview with her last summer. Anne Lamott reads from Imperfect Birds, Oak Brook Borders, 1500 16th Street, Suite D, Oakbrook, 7 p.m. more ›

Anne Lamott takes on subjects with capital letters [Alcoholism, Motherhood, Jesus], but she does so with self-effacing humor and ruthless honesty—a decidedly lower-case approach to life’s “Big Questions,” noted a reviewer for Newsweek, and with her seventh novel, “Imperfect Birds,” the 56-year-old writer takes on another complicated issue: teenage pharmaceutical drug abuse. more ›

Whenever Chicago gets overcast skies, our mind drifts to highfalutin' aspirations and rainy afternoons spent cuddled in an old bookstore like After-words or a creepy museum like The International Museum of Surgical Science. Here are a couple of places we'll be shedding off our rainy day blues this weekend. Chicagoist really wants more tattoos. Even if we can't afford them right now, we can drool over Mitch O'Connell's aptly named new book Mitch O'Connell's Tattoos.... more ›

We can't believe we never heard about this before, but it took us years to hear about this, so we definitely miss things. There is a free monthly interview series called Writers on the Record with Victoria Lautman. It's a live interview hosted by Victoria Lautman at the Lookingglass Theatre and takes place Sundays at noon. more ›